Someone left this for her

Sandra's brow furrows and she starts to think about the little statuette. "Let's see... I was sure you were there. It was the day the inquisitor was leaving. I was trying to spend most of my time in bed, recovering from giving birth, but that was the day I went looking for you down here. And you... called me down to the lower library."

"The what?"

"The lower library - where you kept all the most dangerous and valuable tomes," Sandra says, blinking and fighting against whatever false memories and conditioning are at play.

"Can you show me?"

She takes your hand, leads you back to the study and turns the head of a small decorative fixture on one wall. There's a click and the heavy bookcase next to it silently swings open. A classic concealed door, except up until now you've never paid any mind to that little fixture. Like the statuette it's simply there, never worth noticing.

Behind the bookcase is a narrow stair that leads down and down. When you close the bookshelf behind you a faint tracework of green tinged light blooms from the ceiling, an ancient spell fused into the rock that must be in need of repair. The study is one of the lowest parts of the mansion, but this takes you about two stories lower.

The room you find at the bottom is indeed a library, with bookshelves made from glazed white tiles. It's an old trick for making bookshelves that can take enchantments, usually those that protect against damage to the tomes. A quick test with your magic reveals that these are very heavily protected - even if half these spells were to fail the books would remain unaffected by the passage of time.

The real surprise is when you walk past the set of floor to ceiling shelves that divide this part of the room from the next. You were expecting more books, but instead you find something that takes both your and Sandra's breath away. Standing in an arched alcove is a massive onyx statue, easily 12 feet tall, of a beautiful and powerful catgirl. The statue itself, the great stone pedestal it stands on, even the large alcove it rests in all radiate intense magic.

It takes a while before either of you can speak. Finally you say, "That shouldn't be possible. Everything I know about magic, everything I've ever been taught, it should be impossible for an object to hold and direct magic like this."

"I think that's for me," says Sandra, pointing at a small red envelope sitting atop a white tablet in front of the statue. She approaches it cautiously, snatches the envelope and dances back to your side.

She cracks the seal, reads it and rereads it. Then she say, "Well... I understand part of it. It looks like some predecessors of yours created all this, but they made the statue for me?"

She shows you the letter and you recognize the spell script woven into the text. Sandra does have the basic explanation, but the long ago mage who left this note helpfully listed out the activation conditions for you. It's both glorious and complicated.

"Ah!" you say, checking over the note. "It picked you because you were the one to meet the conditions."

"Me? Why not Doe?"

"Because one of the things the spell check for is whether I've altered someone's memories. So Doe was disqualified. Same for all my wives until you. Hmmm, interesting - Lessia would have been next because she's going to give birth to a catgirl child."

"So what was all this waiting for? What conditions?"

"It has to be someone who is married to or the child of the mage of this mansion. That person can't have had their memories, emotions or a few other things altered. They have to either be a catgirl who has given birth to the child of the mage of the mansion, a catboy who has fathered a child with a female mage of the mansion, a non-catfolk who has given birth to or fathered a catfolk child or a catfolk child who is the son or daughter of the mage of the mansion."

"Gah! It sounds like legalese."

"Sorry, spells are pretty specific about this kind of thing. I was sort of reading and translating at the same time."

"So... right, if you had wiped my memories Lessia would be next because the catgirl in her belly is yours, even if it's not hers."

"Right. I guess the spell's author didn't quite think of that, or maybe he or she didn't care. But whoever they were they were awfully particular about everything else."

"Hmmm, and if you didn't have me or Lessia then Harmony. If not her then... I guess Doe's firstborn?"

"Yes, first born child to reach the age of sixteen."

"Why? What's the point of so many conditions?"

"Well, from what I can see, it's so that a catgirl or catboy, or a mother or father of one, gets a chance to judge me."

"Huh?"

"That statue is insanely powerful. I think whoever built this wanted a way to make sure catfolk had the chance to control their own destiny."

"Ah, okay. So they didn't know what kind of mage would finally finish the puzzle and make cute catgirls. I guess there was a chance of you being the kind of mage you pretend to be for Patrick when you visit Emilie. I notice you never mentioned the word marriage anywhere in there either."

"Exactly. And you can imagine that a catfolk child, finding enormous power at the height of their teenage years..."

"Kind of a worst case if you've been a bad father."

"Yup."

Sandra bumps her hip against yours. "Man, you're a lucky guy to have a naughty catgirl like me at your side. Even explaining this to Lessia would have been pretty hard. Instead you've got a partner in crime."

You rub her ears hard enough that Sandra's tail bats against your ass. "No kidding."

"If they set all this up, they must have known someone would be working on catgirls." She gestures at the huge statue. "I mean, you don't carve something like that without making sure it's going to be catfolk. Can you imagine how silly this would be if you had a thing for dogs, foxes, centaurs, harpies, mermaids?"

You chuckle. "Yes, I bet if I check around I'll find some clues. But the master of magic able to create a statue that shouldn't be possible probably found some way to subtly affect me. And probably a few previous mages as well. They played the long game." You think about it a little more and muse, "I wonder if they were the ones responsible for this area becoming the county of Felinia?"

"Are you mad that someone played mind games with you? That maybe catgirls weren't all your idea?"

You give her a kiss and say, "I think I can forgive this long dead mage, or more likely mages. Just look at the results!"

"Mmmmm, yes, I don't think they had to do any magic to make you want to sleep with us. You were a naughty mage before you claimed this mansion, weren't you?"

"Yes, and you've been wrapping people around your finger since long before you got your paws on a magical statuette. But I do need to know what wishes you've made with this thing. It will help me to figure out how it works, how any of this powerful magic even can work."